


the sweet, still woods

by feralphoenix



Category: Deltarune (Video Game), Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Character Study, Don't copy to another site, F/F, Mild Sexual Content, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-29 23:22:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20090479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: Whatever happened to that other Noelle Holiday, in that other world?(Whatever will happen to her in this one?)





	the sweet, still woods

**Author's Note:**

> _(a book is like life, and anything can change_ – Your trouble is, you live your madness out in a fearful panic, without realising it or seeing it for what it is.)
> 
> bonus warning for mentions of transmisogyny (internalized and otherwise) wrt deltarune's setting.

First—if we are to categorize them, to organize the possibilities as though they are books on a shelf, as if they have alphabetical titles, or perhaps more apropos that they have been assigned call numbers to group them by similarity—

First there are all the worlds where you were simply never born in the first place. Worlds where one or both of your parents were never born, and therefore you couldn’t exist—worlds where your parents were born to different eras. Worlds where Rudy Holiday fell down much earlier, too early into your parents’ correspondence or their marriage for you to be conceived. Or, perhaps a world or two where instead of marrying your mother, Rudy moonlit for a few years as the king’s bedwarmer, and Asgore was less lonely and a little more well-adjusted for the comfort, until Rudy passed and left him as bereft as ever.

Then there are the worlds where you were born hundreds of years into the past, and lived and died quite happily without your lifespan and hers overlapping. Worlds where you met and married other girls, or pined sadly after them without ever making a move.

Or, likely but unluckily, the worlds where you just so happened to be alive during the brief appearance of a human child in the Underground, and you strayed across its path—the path of, say, a girl, with a little in common with another world’s you; and something in you recognized that and you reached out to her, but her eyes only reflected her own fears and so to her every extended hand looked like a threat, and you ended your life as a dust stain along the hem of her tutu.

Just as likely, though, are the worlds where you are still alive in the 2110s: As an old backbent great-great-grandmother in New Home, or a hundred-year-old spinster in Snowdin Town, or a preoccupied middle-aged employee working the Core or one of Mettaton’s many business ventures. In those worlds if your path and hers crossed she would not hardly be a blip on your radar—just a rambunctious child, underfoot, perhaps the same age as your children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren.

But, too, there are the worlds where you are only a few years older.

These are the worlds where you will meet her: Perhaps after the Barrier has been torn down, when Toriel has made her school, and all the different grade levels are bunched together in the same building while Monster Town comes together on the slopes of Mt. Ebott. Or perhaps even later on, when you have a job in town instead of going to college and a group of high school students start loitering at your MTT brand movie theater, or the hot dog stand where Sans has hired you, or the holiday ornaments store, or the one with the teaching supplies.

Perhaps your family ties will see Asgore introduce you one day to his child the ambassador’s unlikely girlfriend, and your heart will sink because you’ve always liked that type. But maybe this will be one of the worlds where Frisk has chosen someone else—their armless classmate, for instance—or one where they have brought the prince and the first human back with them against all the odds, and so they are already romantically occupied with those two closest to their heart. Perhaps you have known of this girl for a while, noticed before how handsome she is, but her first true entry into your orbit will be when it falls to you to collar her for shoplifting chalk.

In some of these worlds, it must be acknowledged, the spark will peter out because her inertia sends her back out of your reach too soon—or because you hesitate too long to make a move, and she falsely assumes a lack of interest on your part.

But then in others you will get to talking, and get to know one another, and you will make friends and go on dates. These are the worlds where the sweeter outcomes are more plentiful: The ones where in five years she’ll be debating whether Suzy Holiday is a name she’d like to wear or if she would rather keep her own. The ones where in ten years people will give the pair of you second looks as her belly grows because _with your personalities shouldn’t those roles be switched?_ and you won’t even mind it that much because you’re so excited and terrified to become mothers soon; the ones, too, where biological children are an impossibility and so you apply to foster or to adopt. And of course the worlds where you decide to stay childless, devoted to your jobs and the freer opportunities to enjoy each other’s bodies.

And these are the worlds where you will rest your head on your wife’s shoulder or she will set her chin between your antlers and you’ll stargaze and reminisce about the days when you were children, trapped, and how lucky you are to have reached such an outcome.

Of course, none of these worlds are the one you live in.

In your own world, your own timeline, this unique version of Noelle Holiday is still oblivious to the doom prophesied on the other side of a paper-thin divide. She, which is to say you, spends her days wishing that she had not chosen a seat in the front row because there are so few opportunities to watch Susie from that seat, especially not without Catti or Berdly noticing.

The Noelle Holiday of this world—which is to say, you—has known and watched Susie for a _very _long time. Out of curiosity, and admiration—and after all, she is so very handsome, and she always seems so much _freer _than you have ever been. But it’s hard to come up with any real good excuse to be alone with her, or talk to her, because you aren’t brave, and because it’s—frightening.

Not just Susie’s reputation, and the worry of being bullied for associating with her, being hated if you’re perceived as her same sort. But that in this world it _means something _to be a girl with antlers in the way it doesn’t in any other, and that you’ve put so much effort into proving you deserve the word _girl, _so much work into being a _good _girl. A track star, a straight-A student, church-attending and God-fearing and not a burden on a dying father and a too-busy mother. You’ve watched Kris crumple and stop caring altogether over the past few years, and that’s scary too because—you don’t know _why _but you want to avoid it. You cannot afford to stop caring.

Good girls’ mouths aren’t supposed to water when they look at bad girls like Susie. Good girls are supposed to be docile and passive and not a pillar of want urgent as a raw nerve. For all that your dad jokes and encourages you, for all that she’s always been so close every single day, you are still paralyzed, frozen under spotlights, unable to reach out.

In this world you spur-of-the-moment try to volunteer to do errands with Susie but fumble the follow-through and it’s Kris who gets sent along with her by the teacher and they both vanish all day then turn up like two peas in a pod, as if it’s natural and inevitable, two misfits, partners in delinquency, and you off to Catti’s house to sleep like what is becoming too usual for you, wishing for what could have been. Locking yourself in the bathroom late at night to dream for a sweltering half hour about the possibilities of you and Susie in a dark closet for the whole day. Cleaning up afterwards, wallowing in the panic that you with your wrong body aren’t supposed to want these things you want and in the misery of wondering whether _that’s _what kept Susie and Kris occupied all day.

But for all of the hurdles this world poses—the story is still unfinished.

Whether Susie is a part of your ending or not here, in this world—is yet up to your own actions.

What kind of story do _you _want it to be?


End file.
